Doors closing, windows opening.

So the Church of England has drawn the "Living in Love and Faith" process to a close, in a way that puts any pursuit of my priestly vocation out of reach for the foreseeable future. A new working group is being set up to continue looking at the question of priests in same-sex marriages, which is supposed to report back to Synod in 2028. Based on past experience, that probably means 2029 or 2030, at which point there will no doubt be a new round of painful arguments, and then I guess we'll see. But for now, that door is closed.

I think I am currently feeling less upset about this than I thought I'd be, although it might just be alexithymia fogging things up. It didn't really come as a surprise, so to some extent letting go of the uncertainty is something of a relief.

It also removes the potential complication that comes with having reinvigorated my academic vocation, coming back to the field with my mental health intact, my ADHD treated, and the general increased wisdom that comes with age. Of course academia and the priesthood is hardly a combination that hasn't been tried before, but I had been worrying slightly about what happens if I have to make a choice about which to pursue first, and now that that choice has been taken off the table I can just concentrate on my studies, and should at least be well into a PhD before the question of formal priestly discernment becomes pertinent again.